He was re-reading his _Frederick_, to correct it for the stereotyped edition. “On the whole I think it is very well done. No man perhaps in England could have done it better. If you write a book though now, you must just pitch it out of window and say, ‘Ho! all you jackasses, come and trample on it and trample it into mud, or go on till you are tired.’” He laughed heartily at this explosion. His laughter struck me—humour controlling his wrath and in a sense _above_ it, as if the final word were by no means hatred or contempt, even for the jackass. “ . . . No piece of news of late years has gladdened me like the victory of the Prussians over the Austrians. It was the triumph of Prussian over French and Napoleonic influence. The Prussians were a valiant, pious people, and it was a question which should have the most power in Germany, they or Napoleon. The French are sunk in all kinds of filth. Compare what the Prussians did with what we did in the Crimea. The English people are an incredible people. They seem to think that it is not necessary that a general should have the least knowledge of the art of war. It is as if you had the stone, and should cry out to any travelling tinker or blacksmith and say, ‘Here, come here and cut me for the stone,’ and he _would_ cut you! Sir Charles Napier would have been a great general if he had had the opportunity. He was much delighted with Frederick. ‘Frederick was a most extraordinary general,’ said Sir Charles, and on examination I found out that all that Sir Charles had read of Frederick was a manual for Prussian officers, published by him about 1760, telling them what to do on particular occasions. I was very pleased at this admiration of Frederick by Sir Charles . . . “Sir John Bowring was one of your model men; men who go about imagining themselves the models of all virtues, and they are models of something very different. He was one of your patriots, and the Government to quiet him sent him out to China. When he got there he went to war with a third of the human race! He, the patriot, he who believed in the greatest-happiness principle, immediately went to war with a third of the human race!” (Great laughter from T.C.) “And so far as I can make out he was all wrong. “The _Frederick_ is being translated into German. It is being done by a man whose name I have forgotten, but it was begun by one of the most faithful friends I ever had, Neuberg. I could not work in the rooms in the offices where lay the State papers I wanted to use, it brought on such a headache, but Neuberg went there, and for six months worked all day copying. He was taken ill, and a surgical operation was badly performed, and then in that wild, black weather at the beginning of last year, just after I came back from Mentone, the news came to me one night he was dead.”